“The ZirconLITH™ project represents a truly unique opportunity between the USA and Saudi Arabia to bring about a revolutionary technology that will impact not only dental, but many other medical and scientific markets”, says Preston Burton, Vice President of Operations for IAS Corp.

The ZirconLITH Dental features advanced technology that allows handling high percentage loading of light reactive polymers with particles such as Zirconium and Lithium Disilicate. The 3D parts produced can then be further processed using furnaces to create very hard, durable units. A new version (V2.1) is being developed that will further increase the percentage yield of the parts as well as provide a means to track individual units throughout the fabrication process (dental device tracking).

IAS Corp is a 26 year research and development firm specializing in medical and scientific automated machinery and equipment with headquarters in Hampton, Virginia.

Materials, materials, materials…. That’s all we have been hearing about recently in the 3D printing intergalactic, as firms instigate to assign funding for research and development relating to the material science behind what we 3D print with.

3D printing is more and more used by dentists, orthodontists and dental labs globally as a foil of existing dental assembly tools.

The dental field is embracing the drift of digital dentistry: 3D printers and 3D scanners designed for dental applications can now benefit dentists offer an improved and more tailored examination to patients while offering considerable cost drops and simplifying complex dental appliances manufacture workflows.

Common dental use cases include the creation of custom 3D printed wax patterns (wax-ups) for casting, 3D printed night guards or surgical guides. Metal additive manufacturing is also increasingly used for direct manufacturing of temporary dental crowns or metal 3D printed bridges and many types of dental implants using metal dental 3D printers.

In 2015, the additive manufacturing market for the dental industry was worth $780 million per year. Now, the estimate is that the 3D printing market in the dental field will reach more than $3.1 billion by 2020.

3D printing can save time and money for dentists, orthodontists and dental labs specialized in the production of dental implants and appliances (crowns, bridges, night guards etc.). Using 3D scanning, dentists and orthodontists can easily capture their patient’s denture in 3D with a high accuracy. Using 3D printing, they can then build custom molds for dental casting or directly 3D print specific dental appliances or implants.

In a nutshell, dental labs incorporate 3D scanning and additive manufacturing in their workflows to produce dental crowns, implants, bridges and other dental appliances more efficiently.